Stupid And Futile Gesture

Here’s the latest good news for our side, and bad news for them:

Numbers released Monday show that the FBI ran 192,749 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) background checks on Black Friday 2022. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) noted that the 192,749 NICS checks on Black Friday 2022 “[rank] it third in the Top 10 Highest Days for NICS checks and…[represent] a 2.8 percent increase from Black Friday 2021.”

The FBI conducted 187,585 NICS checks on Black Friday 2021 and 186,645 checks on Black Friday 2020, Breitbart News reported.

The NSSF observed that there were 711,372 NICS checks “during the week leading up to and including Black Friday.”

The strong Black Friday NICS check numbers come after surges in gun sales during recent years.

For example, on October 6, 2022, Breitbart News reported retailers had sold over one million guns a month for 38 consecutive months.

You have to ask yourself about the Gun Control Set:  “Why do they even bother, anymore?”

I mean, if you look at the thing clinically, the whole concept starts with that innate human characteristic, that instinct of self-preservation that has been baked onto your genetic structure, perhaps only alleviated a little by the “fight or flight” reaction to danger.  So there has to be an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance to resist that impulse, and I can only think that it’s assisted by constant propaganda of the “guns are evil” mantra of the media and politicians.  On the one hand, you have people who are genuinely upset by violence (and there’s nothing wrong with that) but think (mistakenly) that removing weapons from individuals will end violence;  and on the other hand, you have the malignant power-seekers for whom an unarmed populace is the sine qua non  for societal control.  (There is an overlap between the two groups, and I’ll address that later on when it becomes more relevant to the discussion.)

Then, of course, came a group of wise men in 1779 who, when starting up a new country pretty much from scratch looked at the situation and said, “The natural instinct for self-preservation is so obvious, only a fool would attempt to gainsay it.”  (Okay, they called it a God-given right, but it’s the same thing, really.)  And having just escaped the clutches of a tyrannical* government a couple of years earlier, they were even more mindful of the fact that men needed tools to resist those bastards who would want to control whole populations.  But then came an even wiser man who realized that one day there would be fools who would want to take away that God-given right, and governments who would work really hard to do so, and so he said, “Right.  We’re actually going to codify this thing so that even a moron can understand that the right of people to self-defense (both personal and societal) cannot simply be legislated away by some asshole that may look like John Kerry, Chuck Schumer or Joe Biden,”  and thus, the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

And yes, over the years that followed the anti-weapon hoplophobes were able to chip away at that natural and legal right, as the government had been reasonably successful at preventing bad people from inflicting violence on innocent people and society at large.  So people were duped into thinking that just because some mope shot at a President with a mail-order Italian WWII military-surplus rifle, therefore nobody else should ever be able to order a rifle from Amazon;  or that when the Constitution was written the authors thereof didn’t know about AK-47s — an efficient semi-automatic rifle being way more dangerous than a muzzle-loading musket and therefore should of course be banned — without realizing that muskets are all very well, until the government brings AK-47s (or their Mattel equivalent) to a little oppression party.

All this was fine and dandy until the Third American Revolution began in, of all places, Ferguson, Missouri and people suddenly realized that the government, largely composed of knaves, cowards and Socialists (some overlap), was no longer going to guarantee the safety of innocent people against mobs of murderous thugs and vandals.

Which is why, as the above article points out, ordinary people have gone out and bought over 38 million guns since Ferguson  — to the surprise of absolutely nobody except the hoplophobes and government stooges.

One would think, returning to the original question posed at the top of this post, that supposedly intelligent and rational people would see the absolute common sense of all this, and say, “Screw it.  There’s no point in trying to overcome this gun ownership thing, because doing so is just a stupid and futile gesture and so we’re not going to bother with it anymore.”  And indeed some have: 

Gun control advocate Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Sunday that Democrats in the Senate “probably” do not have the votes to pass a ban on “assault weapons.”

But these hoplophobes are people who have attempted to deny basic human nature, and their government allies have attempted to suppress it;  so I suppose it’s just a battle which we’re going to have to fight over and over again, ad infinitum et nauseam.  And speaking of idiots, there’s this statement from President Braindead:

“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” said Biden. “It has no socially redeeming value… Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

My only regrets are that a) we didn’t get to 200,000 NICS** checks last Friday, and b) the purchases weren’t all semi-sutomatic rifles.


*the concept of “tyranny” is very much a relative one;  the Founding Fathers may have thought that a 3% consumption tax on tea was iniquitous and therefore justified rebelling against the greatest world power since the Romans, so we can only guess what their reaction would be to a government which takes away over a third of a person’s wages at gunpoint, and The People just shrug and say, “Okay.”

**yet another little institution which would cause the Founding Fathers, were they alive today, to reach for their AK-47s.

Stick It, Simon

And in so-called “medical’ news, we have this asshole sounding off:

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha declared that the best way to “move on” from COVID-19 is actually to submit to an endless booster campaign for eternity.

Let’s just be polite and say that I am extremely skeptical of the efficacy of such “boosters”.

Why?

Despite having been vaccinated twice (as per government decree), both I and New Wife caught the Omicron pox soon after the second jab.  And nobody has yet proved to me that the new shots are going to be any more effective than the previous ones, or that having more pricks than Madonna on a random Saturday night will stop the ‘Rona.

So, not to be polite:

Get fucked, Jha’ll.

Still At The Movies

Still talking about today’s shit movies, Reader Bruce T. sends an email which adds:

I spent 22 years restoring and preserving classic films for The Library of Congress. I’ve seen many. Don’t fall into the lazy habit, as I did for decades, of almost exclusively watching movies with English dialogue. I’ve discovered a whole new world of sophisticated plots, consummate acting, and beautiful cinematography in films from Japan, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and others. The best part? Even the newest productions are not ‘woke’!

Good points, one and all.  (Although I’m reminded of that wonderful opinion:  “If the furriners had had anything of value to say, they’d have made their movies in English.” )

I’ll be getting a list of titles the above from Bruce in the near future, which I’ll be happy to include in a post.

Watch this space.

Not Really Voluntary, Is It?

Here’s one which makes me believe that some cops need strangling:

Sussex Police has threatened a women right’s group founder with a hate crime arrest after a rally two months ago where her group was attacked by pro-trans activists.  The force told mother-of-four Kellie-Jay Keen an allegation made about her that she used ‘words or behaviour to stir up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation’ was now being investigated.

In an extraordinary phone call released by Standing For Women founder Kellie-Jay, one officer said she could be arrested if she did not attend a ‘voluntary’ interview.

In the first place, it’s a bullshit charge (except that it’s in Not-So-Great Britain, where it’s legal), and in the second, just about any judge in the civilized world should throw this nonsense out the back door, with prejudice.

But apparently calling militant trannies a bunch of sickos is A Bad Thing, so Our Heroine will doubtless be walking the plank soon.

No wonder the Brits ban ownership of AK-47s, because in cases like this…

No Choice At All

Loyal Reader Sean F. explodes in my email:

I gave up going to the theaters for movies years ago, because it was a teenage wasteland of people talking or on their cellphones. I just wanted to watch the expensive movie with no distractions; is that too much to ask?
Well, here we are in the internet age where streaming is king. I signed up to Paramount because they had my American football games for my local channel I don’t receive on my antenna. Aha, movies were included!
So I watched some old Bond movies and classics, but they ran out. I decided to go by ratings (thought I was clever) on Rotten Tomatoes.
Guess what I discovered after abstaining for years? I didn’t miss a fuckin’ thing! Modern movies – 98% SUCK. I guess the plot 1/8 of the way through, and then by 1/4, I have already discovered the ending. UGH – who wants to even try to watch this shit??
I am so disgusted, I watched “Casablanca” for the umpteenth time the other night. What the fuck has happened? Liberal influencce, WOKE, gay, bad directors??? I like Eastwood,Tarantino, and Stone, but they are almost gone. Ford, Kubrick, and Hitchcock are my favorites, among others, but the list shrinks every year. what’s a poor boy to do?

You forgot the bad lighting, bad sound and mumbling dialogue.

My only suggestion — because I am in precisely the same boat, as I suspect are many of my Readers — is to lay in a supply of your favorite classic movies on DVD/Blu-Ray and a backup all-format DVD player.

I know what people are going to say:  “I get bored watching the same old movies all the time.”

Frankly, that’s just because you don’t own enough of them.  There are literally hundreds of old movies out there, and while not all are Casablanca-classics, I would suggest that even a mediocre Bogart movie (e.g. All Through The Night ) is going to be a hundred times better cinematic experience than Fast ‘N Furious 27  or Captain America:  Queer Hero. 

My own Christmas- and birthday lists for friends and family are going to be almost exclusively old movies from now on, and I would humbly suggest that you could do a lot worse than that.

If you’re short of ideas, then start with Bogart and Mitchum, and go from there.  Or pick a director like John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch or William Wyler, and pick from among their offerings.

Just those five will afford you hours and hours of pleasure.  At some point soon — probably on a Saturday — I’ll put together a list of some length, to include not only movies I know well or have in my own collection, but ones I plan on getting in the future.